Hello! I am a bit of a lurker on TypeDrawers, but I thought I'd try to make my first post.
I have a question about foot serifs that are cupped, as in the sample image below.
I have read several different reasons:
1) In Sofie Beier's book "Type Tricks" (which I think is quite helpful) and in
this article by Mark Jamra, both authors note that an optional illusion can occur where serifs appear to bend outward. This illusion is corrected by cupping the serifs. However, I have never really been able to see the optical illusion that is described—flat serifs look okay to me? Perhaps my visual acuity isn't good enough.
2) It seems clear that some typefaces are placed on calligraphic models where the original calligrapher finished his/her letters with cupped serifs. That is, they drew their serifs with a curve. In this case, cupped serifs are a stylistic feature...yes?
3) This is not as well documented (or perhaps I have not found the right source), but in letterpress printing, sometimes ink spread around the imprint of the type. Did this ink cause the cupped effect? And if so, did the original type designers and punchcutters want the cupped serifs to be seen in this way? I didn't know if in this case, cupping was used to counteract the ink spread, so that the serifs would look relatively straight.
In this last case, I thought the situation might be a bit like contemporary ink traps.
That is, some designers like how the ink traps look in fonts like Bell Gothic, etc.
And eventually, what was a functional detail becomes a stylistic feature.
At any rate, if anyone has thoughts or helpful references on this, I would be grateful for input and suggestions.
Comments
Regarding Smeijer's explanation, I am not convinced. In 21.2 he says "one deviation and the whole ideal falls apart". Why and when the contour would get any deviation? Bad printing? And in 21.3 he says these not-so-rational forms works better in text, which is a statement without a rationale (in this fragment at least).
and bracketed serifs
?
In a 19th Century style such as Clarendon, with sharper terminals and more rationalised features, flat serifs are appropriate, and cupped serifs would look wrong.
The 18th Century Neo-Classical and Romantic styles are an interesting arena for varying approach to serif design, because one can either emphasise the rationalist aspect of these styles, as many modern versions of Bodoni and Didot do, and make the serifs very flat and monolinear, or one can reflect the traditions of writing masters and engravers that inspired those types and make them softer as in ITC Bodoni.
However, I think that diagram is more about the curved counterspace rather than cupper serifs. In the drawing, both serifs have flat bottoms.
Still, perhaps the same thinking applies—that it was difficult to make the serifs precisely flat, therefore they were made curved. And to take John Hudson's point, perhaps this simply looks better.
Maybe the cupped serif is due to all of these things rather than one single thing...
But it I do think cupping reflects a visual intention more that a production artifact.
I suspect that the “undershoot” of cupped serifs harmonizes nicely with overshoot in general, and is part of the same phenomenon.
Notably, PostScript Type 1 recognized this by adjusting both in its method of Alignment Zones. I vaguely recall that there is a special category of Serif Hint, and you have to make the round apex BCP of the cup exactly in the middle for it to work properly. Is that right?
As metal sorts are used over and over, their surfaces get worn, and more so at their corners. So cupping serifs may also be seen as a countermeasure to the eventual wear the sorts can expect. In a way, a kind of subtle "light trap" at the corners. Zapf once talked about how the tapering strokes of Optima were intended to resist the wear he saw compromising standard grotesques.
We may find it useful to flip the question: not "what was the purpose of the serifs getting lighter in the middle," but "what was the purpose of the ends of the serifs getting thicker?"
1: It counteracts an optical illusion of bulging. But I'm not convinced.
2:
(Which personally makes me cringe.)
Ergo: Generally best to avoid it.